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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Holy shit ... she really is crazy

Delusions of grandeur, much? Ingraham believes that to be an effective family therapist you must listen to her show? And notice how after finding out the guest doesn't listen to talk radio Ingraham wants to dig up info on the guest so that she can personally "destroy her" with ad hominem attacks. Ingraham begins saying "she's a big liberal" - you can hear the dripping contempt she has for "liberals". The guest actually works with the conservative Heritage Foundation, but to the Manichean ego-maniac, if you don't listen to Lord Ingraham, Goddess of the AM you're a "liberal" and an idiot.

And this psycho is Bill O'Reilly's regular Friday guest host.

Edit - Commenting further, notice how reflexive it is for Ingraham to start looking to attack the guest's character. In the worldview of Ingraham and so many of her ideological cohorts, to disagree with them on something (in this case apparently that one must listen to AM radio) means that by definition there must be something wrong with your character. If they can find (or in many cases - fabricate) something wrong with a person's character then they don't have to bother considering why someone might disagree with them on an issue. It isn't so much about the person being attacked as it is about them finding someway to reduce cognitive dissonance for themselves; in short, a way of circumventing having to think.

Recall that this is exactly what happened to Glenn Greenwald for criticizing the hypocrisy of Malkin-sphere bloggers.

3 comments:

From listening it is clear that Ingraham has an over-blown sense of importance for her and right-wing talk radio in general.

Fortunately she is wrong. Righty talk radio has been shown to be fairly inconsequential in lobbying for their choice of Republican nominee. (Guiliani or Romney)

It's also interesting that she is bascially telling the guest that she should be doing her homework, by listening to Ingraham's show. Yet the guest is the one who is supposedly invited on the show to share her expertise.

And note that she instructs her staff during the break to find more on the guest, muttering something about not having read anything about her. So she rails at the guest for not listening to her show ("Do some research!") but then acknowledges that she - the interviewer - doesn't know anything about her guest. Hypocrite much?

Along those lines, another observation. Like O'Reilly, some of these hosts like to make it seem like so much of everything is about them. Any mention of O'Reilly in any newspaper in the U.S., and he usually has a story about it on his show.

And interviews. The main reason O'Reilly interviews anybody, is to have an opportunity to tell us what he thinks. Always directing the focus to him. I only very rarely hear Ingraham, so I don't know if she does the same.